Background: Studies of changes in engineering students’ perceptions of ethics and social responsibility over time have often resulted in mixed results or shown only small longitudinal shifts. Comparisons across different studies have been difficult due to the diverse frameworks that have been used for measurement and analysis in research on engineering ethics and have revealed major gaps between the measurement tools and instruments available to assess engineering ethics and the complexity of ethical and social responsibility constructs.
Purpose/Hypothesis: The purpose of this study was to understand how engineering students’ views of ethics and social responsibility change over the four years of their undergraduate degrees and to explore the use of reflexive principlism as an organizing framework for analyzing these changes.
Design/Method: We used qualitative interviews of engineering students to explore multiple facets of their understanding of ethics and social responsibility. We interviewed 33 students in their first and fourth years of their undergraduate studies. We then inductively analyzed the pairs of interviews, using the reflexive principlism framework to formulate our findings.
Results: We found that engineering students in their fourth year of studies were better able to engage in balancing across multiple ethical principles and specification of said ethical principles than they could as first year students. They most frequently referenced nonmaleficence and, to a lesser degree, beneficence as relevant ethical principles at both time points, and were much less likely to reference justice and autonomy.
Conclusions: This work shows the potential of using reflexive principlism as an analytical framework to illuminate the nuanced ways that engineering students’ views of ethics and social responsibility change and develop over time. Our findings suggest reflexive principlism may also be useful as a pedagogical approach to better equip students to specify and balance all four principles when ethical situations arise.
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Measures of Ethics and Social Responsibility Among Undergraduate Engineering Students: Findings from a Longitudinal Study
Prior research on engineering students’ understandings of ethics and social responsibility has produced mixed and sometimes conflicting results. Seeking greater clarity in this area of investigation, we conducted an exploratory, longitudinal study at four universities in the United States to better understand how engineering undergraduate students perceive ethics and social responsibility and how those perceptions change over time. Undergraduate engineering students at four U.S. universities were surveyed three times: during their 1st (Fall 2015), 5th (Fall 2017), and 8th semesters (Spring 2019). The students who completed all three surveys (
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10490511
- Publisher / Repository:
- Springer Science + Business Media
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Science and Engineering Ethics
- Volume:
- 30
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 1353-3452
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Abstract Background Increasing engineering students' engagement with public welfare is central to promoting ethical responsibility among engineers and enhancing engineers' capacity to serve the public good. However, little research has investigated how student experience attempts to increase engagement with public welfare concerns.
Purpose/Hypothesis This study identifies and analyzes the challenges facing efforts to increase engineering students' engagement with the social and ethical implications of their work through a study of students' experiences at two engineering programs that emphasize public welfare engagement.
Design/Methods We conducted interviews with engineering students (
n = 26) and ethnographic observations of program events, classes, presentations, and social groups (n = 60) at two engineering programs that focus on engagement with public welfare and foreground learning about the social context and social impacts of engineering. We analyzed these data to identify areas in which students experienced challenges integrating considerations of public welfare into their work.Results We found that four main areas where engineering students experienced difficulty engaging with considerations of public welfare: (a) defining and defending their identities as engineers; (b) justifying the value of nontechnical work and relevance to engineering; (c) redefining engineering expertise and integrating community knowledge into projects; and (d) addressing ambiguous questions and ethics.
Conclusions This work contributes to knowledge about the barriers to increasing students' engagement with issues of public welfare, even when programs encourage such engagement. These findings are relevant to broader efforts to increase concerns for ethics, social responsibility, and public welfare among engineers.
